


1940

by Unbreakable_Vow



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Spoilers from FB2, and somewhere here there is my interpretation on the “Dumbledore waited five years”, hypothetical scene from FB4 I guess, works with almost any credence-is-aurelius theories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-02
Updated: 2018-12-02
Packaged: 2019-09-05 21:59:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16819279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unbreakable_Vow/pseuds/Unbreakable_Vow
Summary: In which there is a harbor, a conversation between siblings, and somehow the circle is closed.





	1940

**Author's Note:**

> English is not my first language, I did try my best and I hope nothing seems too much off.

When he opens his eyes, Aurelius finds himself in a place that is familiar to him, but that he has not seen in a very long time: the no-maj harbor of New York, full of boats tied to the piers and with the unmistakable dark concrete roof.

When he was a boy, Mary Lou used to take him here with her to pick up the new children from the rest of the world; and one time Modesty, after having had a nightmare, had escaped here deciding to leave on the first ship, and he had come to take her back to the orphanage.

It's different from how he remembers it: first of all, there's no one in sight, and in his memories this place was full of people who came and went; second, there’s a strange fog all around the place, almost white, one that he has never seen before - and he has been in so many different places in his life that that seems a bit suspicious.

He has only the time to ask himself if it's a trick of someone from the opposite faction, a sort of alternative reality created by magic -

_"It's normal, Relì," Queenie always answered when he hypothesized impossible things about magic and what it could do. "You grew up as a no-maj, magic will always be a little of a mystery for you. I still remember when Jacob -"_

\- when he sees, sitting on a bench in front of an imposing ship, a little girl with auburn hair.

Unsure about what to do, he tightens his wand in his hand and goes towards her. But, and it's a strange thing, as he approaches her it almost seems like that girl is changing: a few meters away and she looks like a teenager, closer than that and she’s now an adult, and when he gets in front of her he sees a middle-aged woman.

The woman turns to look at him, and her blue eyes stare at him with a sweetness that makes him uncomfortable. He is not used to it, especially by strangers - in his life, before Grindelwald, there was only pity and contempt; after, only fear and hate. He remembers only Queenie looking at him that way, Fawkes when he called him, Grindelwald sometimes, and, in what seems like a lifetime ago, in the two months he came to think of as the best of his life, Nagini.

"Hello, Aurelius," says the woman, who now has long white hair with some red streaks that move with her slight nod. "I was waiting for you."

Who is this woman with a peculiar English accent, and what does she want from him? Aurelius notices that she has no wand in her hand, and her pose is relaxed and calm, so she probably doesn’t want to fight. Maybe she just wants to talk.

If so, that’s just fine, because he has so many questions to ask. "Yeah?" he begins as he sits next to her. The fog seems to thin out a little, just enough to see the other boats near them. "And where we are?"

"I don’t know, actually," she says. "You should tell me. Judging by all these boats, it must be a harbor."

Is she having him on? "It's the no-maj harbor of New York."

"Oh yes, well, this explains many things. It's here that you arrived, isn’t it? With little Leta. The circle that closes itself, or something like that. "

. _..what was that?_ he asks himself, confused. Although the information is in the public domain, he has rarely seen anyone referring to the event, and the late Leta Lestrange, with such lightness. And what the hell means _the circle that closes itself_?

"Oh, forgive me, that must be so confusing for you," says the woman noticing his expression. "I should have introduced myself first. Still... do you not recognize me? Of course, you don’t, how could you? You never saw me. But something should still make you understand."

And the surprising thing - the thing that catches Aurelius by surprise and that he cannot explain - is that the woman is right: he feels like she must know her, that despite being the first time he sees her, she is not unknown to him. Something caused him to lower his guard as soon as he saw her, and pushed him to get closer to her. She’s...

_She’s family._

His eyes widen in surprise, and she gives a little laugh. "I see you got it," she says. "I'm your sister."

"Ariana Dumbledore," he says dumbfounded. The famous Ariana, the reason why Grindelwald and his brother became enemies... The sister who _died_ shortly before he was born. "But you're _dead_!" he says, and he feels like an idiot for stating the obvious, but it's impossible for her to be there with him if she’s dead.

She looks at him as if to say _So?_ but does not speak, and Aurelius loses a minute to create impossible conjectures about how it could be possible for her to pretend to be dead, or if talking to the dead is another magic thing that he does not know, before his brain reaches the obvious conclusion.

"I too am..." _dead_ , he ends up in his head, and as soon as he thinks that he knows it to be true, that somehow his life, at 39, is over. He, Aurelius Dumbledore - that the world will always know as Credence Barebone - the indestructible strength of the Grindelwald ranks... is dead.

Ariana nods, a sad expression on her face, and then she seems to understand what he needs because she hugs him in a light hug, murmuring nonsense on his hair, about how everything’s fine and he doesn’t have to worry about anything.

It's so incredibly similar to what Grindelwald always did that for a moment he almost hopes to hear his voice say _"It's all right, my boy,_ " in a sick imitation of a father that Aurelius, in spite of himself, has always seen in him. But the voice is sweet and feminine, and Aurelius closes his eyes for a moment and imagines that it’s Queenie, then Nagini, and finally, when he begins to cry, a mother of whom he has no memories and who has never held him close like that.

When he recovers a little and raises his head, Ariana is looking at him with a look full of love. Aurelius remembers what Grindelwald told him about her - _"She was a caring person, very sweet, but weak, unable to manage her strength like you do"_ \- and he can’t see, in that woman, anything of the weakness Grindelwald has always professed her to have.

"How ..." he asks after a long moment, "how did it happen?"

“You don’t remember?"

Aurelius tries to dig into his memory, but everything is so distant and confused that he can’t remember anything precise. It's strange: it's as if his memories, instead of being less clear and sharper depending on the time that has passed since he lived them, became all distant and confused. "No."

"For me, it was the same. It happens when you die without realizing it. It's as if your mind did not have time to categorize everything before dying, it takes a while to remember. "

Her face becomes sad as if she was remembering something bad, and Aurelius would like to ask, but only a moment passes before Ariana returns to look at him, and continues. "Don’t worry: you’ll remember everything as time goes by. For now, I'll tell you. "

She looks at him for a while, probably looking for the right words. "You imploded," she finally says. "Your obscurus turned against you. I'm afraid it's Gellert's fault. "

And Ariana was right: as soon as she tells him, he remembers something. Not much, but enough. Enough for him to _hate_ Gellert Grindelwald as he has never hated anyone else before. 

The anger rises all of a sudden, and even the thought of Grindelwald makes him want to cut his throat, and knows that if he were alive his obscurus would have already come out. That _bastard_! Giving him a name, a purpose, a family, and then, during the crucial mission, the one that he had spent years training for, turning against him.

"You shouldn’t be angry with him," Ariana says, guessing his thoughts perfectly. "Gellert is... lost, now. I'm afraid that if he ever gets better, it will be too late."

Ariana is not the target of his anger, but Aurelius is too angry to be able to calm down. "It's easy to speak for you!" he says, clenching his fists and moving away from her. "You were not there! How he attacked me, hunted me, lied to me -"

"I know," she says.

" _No, you don’t_!" he cries, because how dare his sister defend his killer? "You did not die because of him!"

Ariana's answer does not come, and Aurelius, still angry and confused, turns to look at her. "Didn’t I?" She asks after a long moment. "And how did I die, then?"

That question catches him by surprise, and it somehow manages to calm him down, because - what kind of question is that? "He... he said your death was an accident," he says softly, confused. "That there was a duel."

_That it’s because of you that our brother wanted me dead_ , he thinks, _so that I would not become someone without control like you_. But he does not add it, because now, after his fight with Albus, he knows that nothing of this is true.

She looks at him a little longer; then, unexpectedly, smiles. "Gellert has the innate ability to tell truth in half, don’t you think?" she says, and judging by her tone she seems almost amused by this. "Enough to say that he did not lie, but never a complete truth. Because it's true that I died in an accident, and it's true that there was a duel... but Gellert was torturing me and Aberforth, and Albus was doing everything he could to stop him."

He knows that this should surprise him, that the story he knows, even fragmented as it is, stil does not go in that direction - Grindelwald has never spoken of torture, nor has he ever referred to himself as the cause of the duel and Ariana's death. But after years at the service of the man Aurelius knows his nature, and he must note that it does not surprise him at all.

"I suppose the story you know is different..." she says, almost reading it in her mind.

"What I know is a lie. Tell me the truth. Why was he torturing you? "

Ariana nods and goes on. "We... he saw us as an obstacle in the relationship between him and Albus. You have to understand that he did not have the best of childhoods, and his Sight made him even more isolated. Our brother was the first person he ever loved, and he loved him with a blind, sick love, as if there was no one else in the world. He wanted Albus to love him in the same way: so much that there was no room for anyone else, not even us."

In all those years spent in Grindelwald's service, Albus Dumbledore has always been an impalpable and constant presence - _like a ghost_ , he once thought, before discovering with his huge horror that ghosts were real. Aurelius, now, finally realizes why. _"What does Dumbledore think, that his **beloved** student scares me?"_ he recalls hearing Grindelwald say at the beginning of his period at Numengard, one evening when he was out with Fawkes. _"He can send an entire army against me: I will destroy all those he **loves**."_

Ariana looks at him, a small smile on her face. "What are you thinking about?"

"How it all makes sense," he says. "I did not realize... I thought it was just revenge, maybe even fear. I’ve never noticed it. He…"

"...he never stopped wanting Albus all for himself, or, alternatively, wanting that Albus had no one else," Ariana concludes for him. "Especially a brother who strongly opposed their relationship and a... sick, dangerous sister."

 _You’re neither of those things,_ he wants to tell her, but before he can Ariana speaks again.

"He tried to push him away from us, to capture his heart so that only Gellert existed for him, just as only Albus existed for Gellert. But when he saw that, no matter how hard he tried, he could not do it, he used the umpteenth quarrel between him and Aberforth to try to neutralize us both. The blood pact prevented Albus from attacking him directly, but he could defend us. There was a duel..."

There Ariana stops, and Aurelius realizes that this is the most difficult moment for her to talk about - her death.

"My obscurus freed itself, even though I tried to stop it... and attacked everyone. In the spells cast by the others to defend themselves, one hit me..."

_And she died_ , Aurelius thinks, the obvious conclusion of what Ariana does not say.

"So yes, as you see, I died because of him," she replies. "Exactly how it happened to you." 

And it is, Aurelius realizes, their deaths are definitely similar. Although not completely.

Because he now remembers the scene clearly, no matter how bad it does make him feel. He remembers seeing his brother after years when he was told he just wanted to hurt him -

_"That's not true!" Grindelwald shouted to try and stop him. "Nothing was true!"_

\- and wanting to do nothing else than to kill him. And Albus Dumbledore, the most powerful wizard of all time, not reacting when he is about to throw himself against him -

_"Why doesn’t he fight me?" He remembers thinking. "Doesn’t he fear my lack of control? Is not that why he wants me dead?"_

\- and then Grindelwald, who for years had done nothing else but prepare him for this, who had taken him all over the world to train him for that moment, standing between him and Albus, trying to destroy him -

_"You must stop!" he shouted at him, spell after spell. "You can’t kill him!"_

\- while Aurelius does not know what to do, with his obscurus that cries revenge, that searches death.

And while Albus Dumbledore was standing there, looking at Grindelwald as if he could not believe his eyes, he saw Nagini... and lost control.

"Nagini!" He suddenly asks, standing up, his heart in his throat. "Where is she? Is she alive? Tell me I did not kill her, please." He can’t believe he killed her - the only person he's ever really loved, her best friend. He remembers seeing her and wanting nothing more than being close to her...

"She’s safe," Ariana replies softly, her hand on his arm trying to calm him down. "When you went to her, she turned into a snake and ran away. But now her curse is complete. She will never be human again."

"So I did not kill her, but I condemned her," he says, and he feels a greater pain than he has ever felt before, so much that, if he was not already dead, he is sure he would die for it. _I condemned her since the day I met her. She did not want any of this._ "It's all my fault." 

"Don’t blame yourself," Ariana says, dragging him to her, an arm around his shoulders holding him tight. "I did it for years too. But we can not do anything about it. It was our obscurus to choose for us, we had no control."

But isn’t that why Grindelwald had trained him, after all? To show Albus Dumbledore how unfounded his fears were, to show him how wrong he had been to condemn a child from birth just because he feared he could become like Ariana.

But of all that he had believed in life, he realizes, very little was true: he doesn’t even know if he really is a Dumbledore. But Fawkes appeared every time he called him, and Ariana is there and calls him brother, so at least that must be true, right?

He should ask her, as he should ask many other things - _Was Aberforth there when I was born? Why did he and Albus decide to send me away? Did Papa know? Would you have allowed it if you had been alive?_ \- but he realizes that he is tired, that he does not want to talk about himself, that the only thing that interests him is Nagini, and how much he regrets not having spent with her all the time that remained to him, rather than look for a revenge that never made sense.

Therefore, of the endless questions he could ask, he only asks two. One for Nagini -

_"What will happen to her?"_

_"Newt took her to the Hogwarts forest. It's the best place for her now. "_

\- and one on the future of the world he left behind. For Queenie, for Fawkes -

_"And what will happen now?"_

_"Grindelwald is in hiding: until he comes back, no one can say."_

\- and maybe even a little bit for Albus.

Aurelius nods, but realizes that Ariana has not finished yet.

"Nobody can find him. Our brother could... Since he broke the blood pact, he has always been on the front line against Grindelwald, even if it broke his heart to do so. But now... I do not know. I think he always acted according to the idea that Gellert had manipulated him as a young man. That he did not hold him in any regard. It was easier this way, to think that Gellert had never loved him. But after all of this..."

"Do you think he will let him go?"

"Until it can be done, yes. Until one day it will be too shameful to not fight him."

Ariana looks up and smiles: when she does it - Aurelius had not even noticed it before - it seems as if a weight has been taken off her shoulders. For a moment he sees the little girl he has seen when he first arrived at the harbor, and he can’t help but smile in return. He forces himself a little to do it - he knows that his weight, the one he carries, for Nagini and for the endless number of people he killed, will be on his shoulders for a very long time.

"Well, little brother, shall we go?" she asks, pointing to the boat in front of them. It's almost as big as a cruise ship, and Aurelius feels like he's already seen it.

"Where does it go?" he asks, even if he already knows the answer.

Ariana continues to smile. "After," she replies, winking at him.

Aurelius looks at her for a long moment, undecided, then nods. Together, the two siblings make their way to the ship.


End file.
